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Something strange is happening on the London food scene. New dining locations are emerging in unlikely, out-of-the-way neighborhoods, where paying guests turn up to eat in someone's private home. Elsewhere, established chefs are taking over a temporary dining venue to cook large no-choice meals for 30 guests for one or two nights, only to disappear again.

A recent event took place above the Violet Cakes Shop (www.violetcakes.com) in a nondescript office block in east London. Here, nearly 30 people ate a specially created meal from Chris Lee, one of the former stars of Chez Panisse, California's most influential restaurant. "I bake cakes all day long," explained Claire Ptak, formerly pastry chef at Chez Panisse, "and I missed the interaction you get by working with great chefs, so I arranged for a series of pop-up dinners, starting with Chris and then Joseph Trivelli from the River Cafe."

Several kilometres away, a chef known only as "Miss Marmite Lover" (marmitelover.blogspot.com) prepares a five-course "piscatorian" meal for GBP 40 in her Victorian garden flat in Kilburn, north London, which she calls the Underground Restaurant. Specialising in what she calls "imaginative, creative home cooking" on her Aga stove, she regularly cooks for nearly 30 people. The last event earlier this month, "A Midsummer's Night's Dinner," was served by a teenage Goth and girls in vintage French aprons.

Welcome to London's world of pop-up restaurants and supper clubs. There is no universally accepted theory about why this culinary trend began last year, but it is assumed the economic recession played a part. Another reason for the growth of the pop-up and supper-club movement is social networking. Most of the regular ones have Facebook and Twitter sites, which means a chef can instantly spread the word on an impending event.

The concept is not new -- for years, private kitchens have "popped up" in Hong Kong and there are a number in Paris. However, London is now the center of the pop-up world. The two most influential ones, run by Stevie Parle and Nuno Mendes, are already out of the pop-up game, although their spirit lives on with regular supper-club events, when the chefs serve multicourse no-choice meals to everyone in their restaurants.

Parle, the talented young chef at the Dock Kitchen, (www.dockkitchen.co.uk) on the Grand Union Canal in North Kensington, started his "Moveable Kitchen" in 2009 with events like a truffle dinner at a rowing club in Hammersmith or a homage to late cookery writer Elizabeth David in a warehouse in Shoreditch. "I think the transience is what makes it more exciting -- you get great freedom by being temporary, which is why people go for it," he said. However, there are downsides to them too. "They were incredibly hard work because you were in a completely new environment every night and have to make a kitchen out of nothing," he added. Perhaps this explains why he has now moved to a permanent location above a converted wharf building, which is owned by designer Tom Dixon. Parle runs supper clubs each weekend, where offerings could be anything from Bollito Misto, Scandinavian Island Cooking or Keralan cuisine.

The other influential chef was Mendes and his partner Clarise Faria, who opened the Loft Project in Hoxton (www.theloftproject.co.uk) as a weekly supper club. Mendes has since moved on to open Viajante, his new restaurant in nearby Bethnal Green. However, the Hoxton space, which used to be his private apartment, continues under the management of Ms. Faria, who organises weekly dinners with chefs from abroad and local ones. Just as at the Dock Kitchen, diners first have to push a buzzer to get through a heavy security gate and then find themselves in what could simply be an open-plan apartment in a semi-industrial location.

The night I attended, James Lowe, the head chef at St. John's Bread & Wine, cooked an assured meal of 10 courses, with accompanying wines for GBP 117.50 a person. Most of the other guests worked in financial professions in the nearby City of London, with the majority of them coming from continental Europe. Part of the philosophy of the events is that you are eating a communal meal so that it is a shared experience of the unknown, as there are no choices on the menu. Although the pricing was at the higher end of London's top restaurants, the meal delivered was impressive in its variety and innovation. It started with fresh gulls eggs and celery salt, and then included baked bone marrow with cider vinegar and wild fennel; pig's head with carrots, mead and pennywort; plus suckling kid, new season's onions and ramson. Lowe was quite frank about why he was doing it: "The reason is because ultimately I would like to open a no-choice restaurant and I have watched these sort of places and just wondered if the public is ready for them." He got the idea by observing how his own customers reacted well whenever he sent them unsolicited some of his own favorite dishes in his restaurant. "Quite often people would come up and tell you later that they were so delighted because they never would have ordered these dishes themselves . . ."

The whole point of the success of supper clubs and pop-ups is the unexpectedness of everything. Late last year, Pierre Koffmann, who was formerly the chef at London's former three Michelin star La Tante Claire, hosted a wildly successful pop-up in a marquee on the roof of Selfridge's department store in Oxford Street. Supposed to only run for a fortnight, it had to extend its season to two months, and was still sold out at £75 (€91) per head. Looking back, Koffmann told me he didn't regret doing it as it was a challenge "and I have been out of work for a few years." He was pleased it was such a success, but he said he doesn't wish to repeat the experience because it was such exhausting work.

Another successful series of pop-ups was recently held in the private house of Jo Wood, the former model and wife of Ronnie Wood, a guitarist for the Rolling Stones (www.mrspaisleyslashings.com). Her series of 10 meals at £125 a head were held in the garden of her house, a former royal hunting lodge on the edge of Richmond Park. She held these sell-out dinners along with Arthur Potts Dawson, a well know green restaurateur, to promote their beliefs in sustainable organic farming. The next event will be a pop-up restaurant in a tent at a music festival in Suffolk in September. After that, she is going to search for unusual locations around London to create special pop-up dinners.

One newcomer to the pop-up world is Charlotte Horton, an English winemaker who lives in her family's medieval castle, Castello di Potentino, in Tuscany, (www.potentino.com) with its own vineyards and olive groves. Her wines are well regarded but she wanted to showcase them plus her olive oil in a congenial atmosphere along with the local cuisine. Alexander Greene, her business partner and half-brother, suggested she do a pop-up at the Frontline Club in London, which is normally closed on Sundays. Given the price of £25 a head, the quality of her wines and the produce for the meals, much of which is brought over from their Italian estate, they quickly sold out on her first showing in April. "I like the concept of a cuckoo restaurant -- it's also rather fun bringing a place to life on its day off."

"Miss Marmite" is content with the way her pop-up dinners have gone and the impact they have had on the London food scene: "The supper club and pop-up movement is testament to how enthusiastic Londoners are to new things. Anyone from either here or abroad can go into an ordinary British home and meet other British people -- I think that is a fantastic experience to offer."

Bruce Palling is a writer based in London.
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